Review of the Year: It’s our favourite things of the year!

We know what you’ve all been waiting for – our top five Things! Right? Right?!! Things is the weekly feature where we take all of the most exciting stuff that we get sent throughout the year and share it with you, like a mouthpiece for the under-represented artists and designers masquerading as a rowdy show-off. Without further ado, then, here’s our favourites of the year.

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It #7

In a land over-populated with fancy pants foodie mags and carefully photographed dishes, Put a Egg On It stormed in with its green cover, kicked up a storm with some top-notch content both editorial and visual, and then left again leaving us confused about what had just happened. That’s until the next issue, though. This is a food zine unlike any other.www.putaeggonit.com

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Doubleday & Cartwright: Victory Journal: Summer 2013

We bloody love Victory Journal so we were very pleasantly surprised when one of the team popped into the studio to say hello and drop off a copy of their Summer issue earlier on this year. They never fail to impress with incredible photoshoots and off-the-beaten-track topics, and this feature on an abandoned swimming pool in the Catskills is one of the most interesting of the year. www.victoryjournal.com

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

We’re huge fans of Dutch photographer Lasse Dearman’s intriguing abstractions of youth, grime and everyday beauty, and his view of photography as tool for adventure is perfectly captured in his Split Second Feeling photo zine. Don’tcha reckon?www.lassedearman.tumblr.com

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

Set up by second year Kingston student David Bhalla, he went to his university’s library looking specifically for books that have been bookmarked and collated the most interesting finds into Bookmarkers, adding his thoughts alongside. David’s enthusiasm for learning new information and the reasons behind choosing each bookmark makes this a fascinating read. www.davidbhalla.co.uk

Here we are, the bloody top ten. Before you ask, yes, the Sushi Cats made it. Phew! It’s an unexpected top ten, but nevertheless an incredibly powerful one. These are the guys that you clicked on so much that they beat every single other post on It’s Nice That into the most read work of the year. Popular/best, tomato/tomato. You get the picture.Ever been in a meeting with a frog and a dog? Me neither. But Andrew Ho has, and he’s drawn it too. His animal-centric paintings are explosions of colour with strange, sometimes sexual narratives. In other words they’re perfect.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/andrew-ho
All together now “Ahhhhh!” Yep, okay it’s one of the most sentimental projects of the entire year but the public went absolutely nuts for it. Philippa Rice illustrates her and her boyfriend’s relationship and it’s really, really cute. Ugh.www.itsnicethat.com/illustrator-philippa-rice is incredible enough before you even notice that the entire mass of colour is made up of PEOPLE’S FACES! And it covers every single square inch of an entire gallery. No big deal. Oh Siggi, you Icelandic emperor, how are you so good?www.itsnicethat.com/siggi-eggertsson-skvis guys made something you probably toyed with making in your GCSE art exam but never did. The difference is that these guys actually went through with it, and they did it really really well. Do these paint-covered rooms remind anyone else of The Tribe?www.itsnicethat.com/detektiv-bureau“Remember that really fun time we were eating noodles with our bare, shit-covered hands at Techno Tribe Fest in summer?” If that rings a bell, this concertina publication mocking British festivals by Kyle Platts is for you.www.itsnicethat.com/illustration-kyle-plats-festival-frenzy do you do when you get the green light to go and visit some of the world’s most famous headquarters for some of the biggest companies on the planet? Polly Brown decided to take photos of the plants that lived in these offices, with astonishingly beautiful results.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/photography/polly-brown of the best things we’ve ever seen and now a staple of any talks we do when we try to explain what kind of stuff really sums up the vibe of It’s Nice That. This real-life recreation of perhaps most famous opening credits in TV history created for Sky One is ludicrously accurate and a joy to any Simpsons fan (everyone).www.itsnicethat.com/articles/come-home-to-the-simpsons you love or hate this blatant internet fodder, you can’t deny that if these were real you’d lose your fucking shit. Why are they content? This is a real project by Neko-Sushi backed up with a real statement and an amazing video and app. Guys, it’s about cats and sushi.www.itsnicethat.com/sushi-cats Brodie used to photograph the kids who jump freight trains in the US and live on the road. He gave up photography and is now a mechanic. I think it’s safe to say this is possibly one of the most unique, genuine photo series we’ve ever had on the site.www.itsnicethat.com/mike-brodie he is! The big dog with the big name, here to blow your MIND with his tangled, intuitive illustration. There’s a reason why this was the most popular post of this year, and that is that Sam Vanallemeersch is bloody brilliant and no one can deny it.www.itsnicethat.com/sam-vanallemeersch

Here at It’s Nice That, 2013 saw us solidify our commitment to audio visual content with the launch of our brand new site First Broadcast. With bespoke video content, audio interviews, our weekly podcast Studio Audience, plus talks from our events, it’s a good place to lose yourself for a while engaging with some all-singing-all-dancing curated creativity (Disclaimer: No actual singing or dancing included). Here’s a look at some of the highlights…When directors Will Hudson and Alex Bec went off to The Big Apple in September, they recorded a series of interviews with some of the creatives they met up with. The project has been an ongoing one and here are two of our favourites; Michael Bierut on why Starbucks changing their breakfast menu is so traumatic and Andrea Aranow on why home will always be NYC.

Teenage years might be little more than a series of impassioned hobbies, angry Nirvana anthems and clumsy snogs to some, but the penultimate instalment of our top 100 means more than that to us. It’s packed full of art and design greatness! We’re like the advent calendar that you get to enjoy ten chocolate reindeer at a time! Without further ado, then, here are ten more metaphorical cardboard doors for you to rip off, you lucky sons of guns…Seetal Solanki first wandered serenely into our digital life back in April, when her impressive client list and incredible nuanced textile design proved her to be a very skilled new arrival. She’s since made her presence known in our print one, too, with her art direction for new magazine Alvar. AND she wrote a piece for our last issue of Printed Pages about her love for her headphones.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/seetal-solanki at this incredible house! And then look at it again, with the knowledge that it is actually a miniature replica made at the scale of one inch to one foot, and try not to let your mouth flop open in awe. Created by Narcissa Ward Thorne (more commonly known as Mrs James Ward Thorne) during the 1920s and 1930s, they’re a staggering reminder of how much you can do with how little photography, and a welcome entry in the top 100!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/mrs-james-ward-thorne you think about possessions as a giant web of reference that you choose to surround yourself with, these photographs of girls living in unbelievably messy bedrooms seem less like filthy, lazy adolescents and more like culturally rich, informed examples of adolescent curation. Ultimately you can call them what you like, we love these photographs and seeing as they were the 18th most viewed thing on the site this year, it seems that you do too!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/maya-fuhr ultra talented Peckham-based Dominic Owen gifted us with hip hop, atheism and funny beaked people in the form of his vector-based illustration this year, and was duly repaid work for clients including Wrap magazine, YCN and Nike, not to mention being crowned the grand old number 17 on the most read articles of the year (which I’m sure is number one in his list of achievements).www.itsnicethat.com/articles/illustration-dominic-owen the fruits of animator and designer Skip Hursh’s personal projects; a series of large-scale brush and ink drawings created for a group show called Off Screen II. Big, colourful, abstract and playful, he ticked a bunch of boxes in 2013. We’re holding out to see him cross off some more next year.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/skip-hursh no shame in admitting it _ we bloody love a visual illusion, which explains why we became so obsessed with photographer Delaney Allen’s work this year. Galaxies made from glitter on cloth, cream spillages transformed into cascading waterfalls; nothing is safe from transformation by his lens, and you’ll have a hard time believing he took this pictures on his kitchen table.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/delaney-allen is potentially one of the most charming projects of this year. Good friends Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton took to sending each other pictures made by untraditional use of a typewriter, never expecting that their collection would end up so extensive or so funny that they’d share it with the rest of the world. Check out the post to see the results (fingernails and toenails get my vote).www.itsnicethat.com/articles/typewriter-drawings, funny, crude and rude – what’s not to love about Joan Cornellà’s hilarious work? Complete with impeccably drawn syringes, tampons, pink bears and poos it is an acquired taste – one that fortunately we have, and seeing as it reached the glittering number 13 on our top 100 articles list, you lot must have too.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/beautifully-crude-rude-and-lewd-comics-from-joan-cornella Lewis divided the nation like Marmite this year with their annual Christmas ad, this time a (sickeningly?) sweet skit about a bear woken from hibernation to enjoy Christmas with his friend the hare. Think what you like about the ad, it’s hard to watch it in the same way once you’ve seen this “making of” clip by Elliot Dear and Yves Geleyn of Blinkink/Hornet, who were responsible for the animation. The pain-staking stop motion process is incredibly impressive to watch.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/making-of-bear-and-hare super Edward Monaghan lit up our previously gloomy lives this summer when he was one of 12 winners in our Graduates 2013 competition. He’s since had an 10-page spread in the Winter issue of Printed Pages and risen to dazzling new heights with his illustration. One to keep an eye on in 2014!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/the-graduates-2013-edward-monaghan

I had no idea I’d written quite so many posts over the last seven months, so trying to choose five of my favourite was something like placing a small child in the toy section at the Argos warehouse and telling them they would only have five things, and they couldn’t even have a look through the catalogue before choosing. Still, you asked for it, so here they are, in all of their flowery, miniature pastel-coloured glory. 2013 has been the year of internet memes, and in a sea of cats, Victorian ladies in black and white with speech bubbles voicing variations on “you’re a knob” and GIFs of Beyoncé dancing on every other Tumblr, I took refuge in these painted beauties by Javier Mayoral. A chef by profession, Javier paints an average of five of these a day, in his spare time, just because he likes to. They’re hilarious, offbeat and completely absurd, and I think they’re bloody brilliant. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/javier-mayoral
A project about domestic interiors isn’t often the sort of thing I’d expect to be bouncing up and down on my chair about in excitement, but when they’re captured by Rosa Rendl’s lens and dreamily abstracted to the point where they’re almost unrecognisable, I’m happy to let that rule slide, and bounce to my heart’s content. These shots are all romantic pastel shades, unexpected angles and anonymous objects, and they’re the product of a uniquely abstract perspective. Lovely jubbly.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/rosa-rendl Kövecses’ book was one of my favourite projects this year for a number of reasons. Not only was her holiday project sweetly sentimental, as she created this gorgeous book to teach a four year-old family member the Hungarian alphabet, but it was also beautifully designed and illustrated, and I managed to namecheck Munching Mike, Talking Tess and Letterland in the article I wrote about it. If you’ve not yet seen the spreads from Ábécés Könyv then now’s the time; they’re a real treat. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/anna-kovcses, I don’t know what’s not to love about Alber Napoleon Wildner; his name sounds like it’s been nabbed straight from a cartoon about a childsize superhero, he creates unbelievable diorama models at a scale of 1:100 and the scenes, from outside nightclubs, suburban streets and Hollywood film scripts, are as weird as they are fantastic. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/alber-napoleon-wildner designer Janusz Stanny is something like the uncredited grandfather of children’s book design; hints of his charming work seem to crop up all over the place in contemporary illustration, and as he’s taught unnameable students at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts it’s not difficult to understand why. I thought his birthday was all the reason we needed to get his work up on the site and marvel at his characters. Don’t they look nice? They do. I was right all along. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/janusz-stanny-1

This is where things get really bloody serious. The hallowed top 30 (is that even a thing?) is where the real cream of the cream (or creme de la creme to coin a new phrase that borrows from French) hang out. What delights are in store in this treasure trove of creative excellence? Who knows. Read on before I mix any more metaphors.Apart from sounding like the most elaborately-titled Murakami novel (which obviously adds a certain appeal) this is arguably the most charming project we’ve posted on the site all year. It’s the documentation of the relationship between an adopted stray cat and an elderly woman by the woman’s granddaughter Miyoko. The unlikely pair eat together, bathe together, share the same bed and just enjoy each other’s company in general. What’s not to like?www.itsnicethat.com/articles/photography-miyoko-iharas-grandma-and-her-trusty-cat-are-a-match-made-in-heaven entering a room that’s FULL of thread. Walk into the thready mess, go on. Holy *&$@ the thread is spelling words! That was pretty much how it felt to walk into Pae White’s South London Gallery installation. Cool huh?www.itsnicethat.com/articles/pae-white interesting one this. A great bit of design work that turned the Nike logo into the NYC logo, it was a huge hit until we were asked to remove it by the studio responsible (who have since also taken it down from their own site). Still the internet being what it is you can still find it really easily; Google it for ultimate logo redesign satisfaction. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/triboro 7–Eleven is such a well-loved bastion of late-night stale pastries and disconcertingly tepid coffee for so many years that it seems almost unthinkable that anyone should attempt a rebrand. Everyone knows you can’t muck about with the logos of popular companies without encouraging vitriolic criticism from the public. But BVD had a crack all the same and did a startlingly brilliant job of maintaining the kitsch charm of the world’s largest convenience store chain.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/bvd-7-eleven-coffee-rebrand were flabbergasted to discover that one of our Opinion pieces fell inside the Top 100 articles this year, then even more amazed to find it was within the top 50; sometimes we forget that you guys read our Opinion pieces. Still, it’s not hard to see why so many people flocked to hear Maisie (then an intern) bemoan the dumbing down of children’s books for the iPad generation. You go guuurrrrl!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/opinion-what-does-the-abridging-of-childrens-stories-mean-for-the-next-generation first reaction when we saw these Chamois Panties was to laugh hysterically. But then we suddenly realised that Christina Guzman’s simple idea was a serious piece of design innovation solving a problem that female cyclists the world over have had to suffer for too long. Now ladies of a stylish cycling persuasion can saddle up each day without having to dress up in Victorian swimwear for the experience. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/chamois-panties reasons why Caroline Mackintosh’s photographs did so well on the site: bare bums, boobs and bubbles. Need I say more? Ok probably; these are interesting and engaging photographs which rise above their obvious click-bait temptations…www.itsnicethat.com/articles/caroline-mackintosh of illusion Leandro Erlich pulled out all the stops when it came to the visual trickery of Dalston House. Visitors were invited to clamber over the facade of a building laid flat on the floor, only to be greeted with their airborne reflections as they did so – a giant upright mirror showing them distorted images of themselves scaling the wall of the house in perilous fashion. Many thumbs up to Leandro for creating a piece that delivered so spectacularly with such simple materials.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/leandro-erlich Paré-Phillips is no stranger to using her body to create imagery. The New York artist is almost always the subject of her work, utilising props, suggestions of clothing and her own skin to create strange and beguiling narratives. But Impressions stood out among an impressive body of work for its subtle use of welted flesh, marked by clothing, the traces of which give clues to the story of a character whose face we never see.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/scout-pare-phillips Maps was one of the least successful app releases of 2013, riddled with frustrating errors and extraordinary oversights. Still, one good thing to come out of it was this lovely piece of archiving from Peder Norrby showing a collection of bizarre instances in which the app made the street you were hoping to cross in the next 10 minutes or so look like some kind of apocalyptic nightmare with buildings, roads and cars bleeding together like wax.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/google-earth-glitches

Trying to summarise the best of this year’s exhibitions is such a tall order that we’re really only prepared to do it once. We’ve already had a crack in this year’s Annual, so if you’d like to see what we really reckoned then you know where you can get your hands on one. Instead, here’s a bunch of brilliant shows that probably didn’t get the attention they deserved in Time Out and the papers and that. Enjoy them, they’re lovely.Apart from being the Nash bit in Crosby, Stills and Nash, one of the most important bands in the history of music ever, Graham Nash was also the long-term lover of Joni Mitchell and (most importantly to this particular exhibition) an incredibly prolific photographer. His documentation of life on the road throughout the 1970s and 1980s shows a unique perspective of one of the most defining eras for rock’n’roll, told throughout the eyes of someone who was an intrinsic part of it all. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/graham-nash-proud-camden Gee, Nathaniel Russell, Evan Hecox, Ed Templeton and Steven Powers all in one room in New York. Mother may we!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/stevie-gee-folklore-show Yahnker is one of our absolute favourite artists. His ability to translate the absurdity of pop culture and the bizarreness inherent in everyday life into captivating imagery is second to none. His latest show Ebony and Benghazi pretty much had it all as far as we’re concerned; Superman with an impressive pair of breasts, Wonder Woman sporting a luxurious chest wig, Moses and Leonardo DiCaprio in a tender embrace and Bill Clinton as a romantic sunset. We genuinely couldn’t love this guy more.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/eric-yahnker-1 isn’t technically a show in its own right, but the standout piece in an exhibition of numerous parts. Still Lisa Pacini and Christine Istad’s Sun deserves your absolute respect for the scale and ambition of it. The two Norwegian artists constructed a giant circular LED light that they drove across Europe in the depths of winter, taking summery brightness to areas that hardly experience light at all in winter. Not only was it a conceptually poetic piece but a true spectacle to behold in the flesh.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/art-lisa-pacini-and-christine-istad is one of the most important names in comics and as such you should definitely know who he is. Earlier this year he did a show at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, one of the world’s most important venues for exhibiting graphic art. That’s more or less all you need to know. It was a treat!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/seth-1